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bsence of controls for other determinants of growth. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of enterprise/empowerment zones, which are federally subsidized projects designed to increase economic development in distressed communities. Studies show that at best enterprise zones have demonstrated mixed results. The most recent and most carefully done studies show little result from enterprise zones as currently implemented.

 

Tax Increment Financing-TIFs-are now the rule rather than the exception in many communities. TIFs are enabled by the state and financed (implicitly) by local school districts and other units of government to encourage local development in “blighted” areas in need of economic improvement. In fact, many TIF supported projects are located in highly desirable places that would certainly be redeveloped and appreciate in value without TIF. The initial rationale, to encourage development of truly blighted locations, is hardly mentioned any longer. Despite their widespread use-perhaps because of it-it has been difficult to find any systematic positive net benefits of TIFs.

 

Many studies have been done of the economic benefit of 'one-off projects' such as sports stadia and convention centers. The consensus of the careful studies is that such projects rarely have any significant development impact, despite pre-investment studies by project advocates that purport to show large economic development 'multipliers.' The main reasons such projects have little net impact is that the economic analysis often assumes that any employment associated with the project is net new employment (i.e., that all workers and other resources would be unemployed without the project), and that it is incorrectly assumed that there is no offsetting multiplier in the other direction because someone pays for the project, typically through increased taxes.

 

Another important development strategy is to pursue balanced land use and environmental policies. All economic activities pollute. The question is how much, how pollution can be mitigated, and ultimately what tradeoffs communities are willing to accept. One of the defining characteristics of pollution and environmental problems is that almost all such problems are characterized by large “external costs.” If my car spews burning oil, for example, I may suffer somewhat, but others around me bear much of the cost. Because of this externality aspect, environmental regulation can be considered a core function of government.

 

A number of studies have looked at the effects environmental regulations have had on one aspect of economic development, namely firm location. These studies generally find that more stringent environmental regulations are associated with disincentives to firm location, but it appears that these effects are small. Furthermore, few studies have grappled with the effects that the environment itself has upon firm location; it is easy to imagine a positive relationship between environmental outcomes and regulation, although the nature of this relationship is not always stra本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。